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Show PROFITEERING. Capper's Weekly is responsible for giving currency to a story that a Kansas Kan-sas farmer recently took a cowhide to Fort Scott, and by ;idding .'J to what he obtained from the sale of the hide he was able to buy a pair of shoes. We had supposed even a single hide was woith a small fortune, having been told that t he high price charged for lea t her was due to the fact t hat the Fnited 8tates had been cut off from its two. principal sources of supply, Argentina and Kusnia, by reason of tho war. We lacked ships in the cue case, and in the other the country was in the 1 throes of revolution. But it would , seem that 1 he scarcity of hides is not1 the real reason why the price of shoes is so high, if We accept as true the tale : of the Kansas farmer and his cow pelt. Is it not possible there are vast stores of leather in the country, which have been bought up for speculative purposes? pur-poses? Fortunes were made, during the Civil war by profiteers who foresaw a big demand for certain articles, and history may have repeated itself iu this very important particular. Only the other day we heard that one large corporation cor-poration had $14,000,000 worth of leather stored away. As this corporation's corpora-tion's business has nothing to do with the shoe, harness or any other branch of the leather trade, the circumstance is suspicious, to say the least. |